by Fran Ryan

from the February 14, 1997 issue of "Down in Front", the newsletter published by Bryn Mawr Borders employees

A few months ago, Cass explained that traditionally, retail jobs do not compensate as well as jobs in the legal, business, and industrial fields. There are reasons for this, reasons which can be traced back to an earlier period of our nation's history, long before Borders was established.

Recent feminist and social historians have looked at the rise of retail labor in the early 1900s as an important point in the history of American women.  With the rise of the modern city in the 1880s, department stores, such as Macy's in New York and Wanamakers in Philadelphia, emerged as new, vital areas of commerce where people came to shop and meet. These stores were different because they encouraged shopping as a form of social interaction.

You did more than just buy shoes at Macy's, it provided social opportunities as well: you met your friends, ate lunch in the restaurant, drank coffee, flirted with someone on the sales floor or merely walked around.  The new stores were envisioned as more than just stores and people were more than just customers.   Customers were guests, and treated as such, from the time they walked through the door to the time they left.  The shop floors, perfume counters, hat sections, and shoe areas were staffed almost exclusively by women workers, whose job was not only to sell you items, but also to make you feel at home.  These women workers, according to historian Susan Porter Benson, were almost exclusively unmarried and between the ages of 18 and their late 20s.  Women were seen as ideal workers in these settings because the shop floor was viewed as an extension of the home in which women could perform their so called "natural abilities"  to  be  caregivers,  service providers, and to take care of people's emotional needs. Managers in these stores were, in contrast, almost exclusively male, providing the kind of patriarchal guidance all Victorian "households" required.  Indeed, this dynamic was supported by the cultural stereotypes and myths about men and women which were predominant in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

The most significant way in which these cultural stereotypes were manifested was in the pay scale allotted to retail work. Retail workers, who were generally female, made less than males in other jobs. Why? One argument continually given throughout the twentieth century has been the "family wage" response which argues that the male is the primary breadwinner, while the female works only for "extra money" to add to her husband's wages.  This argument is a gross distortion of the realities women have faced throughout our history. Despite what some may say, not all women who work do so merely to add to the checks of their husbands. There have always been single parent families, headed by mothers who have had to provide for their children, and there have always been women who have chose not to marry and needed to support themselves. Women who have had to do this have fought against tremendous odds, due to the stereotypes which have dominated our society. Historians who have studied women workers who perform service and retail work have termed them not blue or white collar workers, but pink collar workers.  Pink collar workers traditionally include hotel and restaurant workers, waitresses and all retail workers.

American history shows that women workers have fought against employment and wage discrimination throughout this century. On the job, they have stood up for each other, vented their common frustrations and consoled each other on bad days (just as we do for one another.) they have also gotten together and organized to protect themselves and defend their financial independence.  One place this was done earlier in the century was in the supermarket chains along the east coast. Next time you go over to Acme to get your tuna or Ramen, ask a clerk who has been there a few years about their wages and benefits. Or better yet, stop in at the Wynnewood Superfresh some morning and ask for Kathy. Ask her how after 15 years of dedicated service, she can afford to go to school, make car payments, and take a vacation to the shore every year. Or ask Marcia, on night shift register, how she is going back to school this year and how, thanks to the UFCW, it is not costing her anything.

Women who work in our local supermarkets have economic independence.  They are members of The United Food and Commercial Workers union, Local 1776. Everyone with the UFCW receives tangible benefits: they have security and financial mobility if they chose to stay with their jobs. Because of the tangible benefits their full and part-time workers receive, such as free gym membership, standard raises, full dental and eye care, legal service and $1000 yearly tuition allowance, they are free to do more and explore more if they choose. They don't skip washing their contact lenses because they cannot afford saline solution; they don't buy groceries on their credit cards; they don't have to decide between basic car maintenance  and health insurance coverage.

If Superfresh can afford to give its workers fair, standardized wages, why can't Borders? Surely, as a national chain, Borders' capital goes far beyond that of Acme, I. Goldbergs, or Metropolitan Life Insurance, all of which are represented by the UFCW. Borders did not create the problems of economic gender stereotypes which shaped the wage scale we work under, but everyday you and the men and women you work with deal with its consequences.  We can change it, and by doing so, smash through the glass ceiling that has held retail work­ers, both men and women, in economic inferiority.

Unionization in the retail work­place is economic feminism. It is no theory, it is not an intellectual exer­cise. It is something tangible. A union will work at Borders!